“The mystery” seems to be irresistible to literary novelists – so many have written one or more and doubtless many others want to write them. They certainly read them: in his famous essay about crime fiction, no less a figure than W.H. Auden acknowledges the allure of crime fiction:
“For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol. The symptoms of this are: Firstly, the intensity of the craving — if I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it.”
The thriller or mystery set in an academic environment is a well-trod, beloved chestnut of a subgenre with a long past and one that remains enticing for reader and writer.
Amy Bloom’s new novel, Blunt Instrument is a hilarious parody of detective fiction and the back-stabbing competitive insular (and horny!) world of a hoity-toity, east coast university, called Cromwell.
The story opens with an unnamed professor cracking open a bottle of wine in his office. There’s a knock on the door. It’s the last knock that scholar will hear.
Next, we meet Dell Chandler. As a teenager, she worked with her Uncle Lou in the office of his detective agency, “Martinez and Associates, Private Investigations,” running the day-to-day operations, such as they were. When Lou dies, Dell keeps the business going because “armed private investigator was better than the definitively-not-renewed, frankly unemployable assistant professor I had been before Lou and his kindness.”
She’d lost her academic career when her mother died and she began doing “… everything you’re not supposed to do, and I did it often: yelled at my students, made insulting remarks about everyone’s favorite graphic novels, failed to grade (read) papers, came to class drunk, and cried for most of the ninety minutes. I did not have sex with undergraduates, only because depression made it unappealing and Prozac made it unlikely to be rewarding.”
Through a family connection, Dell is hired by the “icy” Elizabeth Cutty, who is summed up by Dell (to herself) as “Sharp and sixtyish and didn’t care who knew it … Her blue eyes slanted up. Her long nose pointed down. She put out her long hand with its short unpolished nails and her one enormous sapphire ring and I thought if she were a dog, she’d be a Russian Wolfhound, with a powerful set of jaws. She wore a white button-down shirt, a long gray skirt, and beautiful gray suede pumps with scalloped edges, a glimpse of fuchsia lining, and a tall thick heel. If I could have had a relationship with the shoes, not the woman, things would have gone better.”
It seems that our victim, a Professor Bullfinch, was bludgeoned by a “blunt instrument” – possibly his bronze bust of Hawthorne as he worked in his office in the English department. President Cutty (“Liz”) wants this very inconvenient situation to go away. “We need to find the murderer or find that there is none, that he bludgeoned himself to death, which would be ideal” she tells Dell. She offers her a guest house on the campus and we’re off.
Many in the mélange of campus personalities that Dell must negotiate have, shockingly, their own secrets. Bullfinch (Ollie, to his friends, what there were of them) was not a particularly, let’s say, beloved member of the English Department. He was a ladies’ man, with a zipper that had a hard time staying zipped.
Entering the fray are Harry Markham, a “radiant, blonde” dreamboat, with tenure, in his early thirties, Allison Schein, 33, a professor who is really in to Harry, two other professors, Dan Fiske, 40, and Mary Clark, 69, and Cam Binh, a cleaning woman who found Bullfinch’s body. (Her alibi and backstory are the most believable, and sad: she had a “pay to play” arrangement with Bullfinch to supplement her crap income.)
Fiske had had a run in with Bullfinch over his denial of tenure for Allison (she has most of the men in a state of salivation during the entire story) but he doesn’t seem like the killing type. Even less so, Mary Clark, who has an affinity for Scotch and knows everything in the English department, but too frail to bang on Bullfinch’s head, anyway.
But all are suspects to Dell. The mix is further complicated by two cops, Michelle Blanchfleur and her partner, the attractive Nat Baker. Oh, and the mysterious Leah, supposed wife of Michelle, but who also seems to be sleeping with Harry. Whew.
As Dell’s investigation staggers along, the sexual shenanigans of various characters (including Nat and our heroine, Dell) along with accusations of plagiarism, lying, gleeful betrayal, questions about a will of Bullfinch’s – all in a single department – makes one wonder how any teaching actually occurs. (At this point, the marvelous Wonder Boys can’t help but come to mind!)
Even Dell is not immune to Harry’s apparently considerable charms. “I admired his beautiful forehead, with one furrow creasing it, the thick golden-red brows, smooth fox fur above the strong, Scandinavian nose, down to the movie-star jaw, and the constellation of dimples from cheek to chin. Ridiculous. Butterscotch in human form … I was trying to keep my detective brain working while my downtown party district was figuring how we could take a little break from all this tedious good behavior.”
Bloom keeps the story humming along, juggling motives, suspects and lovers with a deliciously snarky tone. It’s a solid mystery, and although the ending comes a bit abruptly, Blunt Instrument is at once hilariously satirical and a sly deconstruction of this well-worn subgenre. It’s practically begging for a sequel, because competent detective or not, we really can’t get enough of Dell Chandler.
Peter Handel has been writing about crime fiction since the early 1990s. His reviews, interviews, and profiles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Portland Oregonian, Pages Magazine, Mystery Reader’s Journal, The Rap Sheet and CrimeReads. Join his Substack here.
